SCP logo

Viewing Results for

2003/2004 ETD User Survey


1. Where do you work/study?

9.39%\% Education: college (40/426 responses)
3.29%\% Education: K-12 (14/426 responses)
67.14%\% Education: university (286/426 responses)
9.39%\% Industry / Business (40/426 responses)
10.8%\% Other (46/426 responses)
93.81% of the people who took this survey
(409 / 436) answered this question.

Other Responses (46 for this question)
"Agriculture"
"bellows"( 2 ) responses
"chemical engineering"
"fiber optic"
"forestry"
"Government"
"government agency"
"government-tourism department"
"govt"
"home"
"International Agency"
"landscape consultant"
"layout"
"local government"
"m.e.electrical"
"MIDWIFERY"
"municipal government"
"music"
"non-profit organization"
"occupational health"
"other"( 15 ) responses
"ph.d student"( 2 ) responses
"PH.D study"
"piled raft"
"power factor correction"
"reaction"
"SCHOOL"
"shield"
"vocational"
"Yong"

2. What do you do?

27.87%\% Researcher (114/409 responses)
1.96%\% Librarian (8/409 responses)
8.31%\% Faculty (34/409 responses)
43.03%\% Student (176/409 responses)
9.78%\% Teacher (40/409 responses)
9.05%\% Other (37/409 responses)
89.68% of the people who took this survey
(391 / 436) answered this question.

Other Responses (37 for this question)
"Administrator"( 2 ) responses
"adminstrator"
"ENG."
"Engineer"( 2 ) responses
"faculty and doctoral student"
"full time researcher/part time student just completed Masters"
"horticulturist"
"other"( 20 ) responses
"Patent Examiner"
"Ph.D. Student & Instructor"
"planner"
"staff scientist"
"Structural Engineer"
"technological survey"
"Town Clerk"
"workforce manager"

3. What type of computer are you using?

5.37%\% Don't know (21/391 responses)
1.02%\% Unix-based (4/391 responses)
1.53%\% Mac (6/391 responses)
90.28%\% PC (353/391 responses)
1.79%\% Other (7/391 responses)
89.22% of the people who took this survey
(389 / 436) answered this question.

Other Responses (7 for this question)
"EP4"
"other"( 5 ) responses
"WINDOWS"

4. What is the speed/type of connection are you using?

5.67%\% Slower than 14.4kbps (22/388 responses)
2.84%\% 14.4 kbps (11/388 responses)
2.32%\% 28.8 kbps (9/388 responses)
3.09%\% 36.6 kbps (12/388 responses)
17.01%\% 56 kbps (66/388 responses)
13.14%\% ISDN (51/388 responses)
21.65%\% Ethernet (84/388 responses)
5.93%\% T1 (23/388 responses)
8.51%\% Cable modem (33/388 responses)
19.85%\% Don't know (77/388 responses)
88.99% of the people who took this survey
(388 / 436) answered this question.

5. Are you familiar with Adobe PDF?

94.33%\% Yes (366/388 responses)
5.67%\% No (22/388 responses)
88.99% of the people who took this survey
(388 / 436) answered this question.

6. Are you familiar with online databases?

74.48%\% Yes (289/388 responses)
25.52%\% No (99/388 responses)
88.99% of the people who took this survey
(388 / 436) answered this question.

7. If you are from a university, does your institution accept electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs)?

19.26%\% No (73/379 responses)
15.83%\% Not from a university (60/379 responses)
64.91%\% Yes (246/379 responses)
86.93% of the people who took this survey
(379 / 436) answered this question.

8. If your institution does not accept ETDs, do you think it should?

27.65%\% No opinion (94/340 responses)
60.88%\% Yes (207/340 responses)
11.47%\% No (39/340 responses)
77.98% of the people who took this survey
(340 / 436) answered this question.

9. Have you ever submitted an ETD?

82.13%\% No (308/375 responses)
17.87%\% Yes (67/375 responses)
86.01% of the people who took this survey
(375 / 436) answered this question.

10. For what purpose are you using this digital library?
Check all that apply.

66.47%\% Research (337/507 responses)
9.66%\% Job related (49/507 responses)
14.79%\% Personal interest (75/507 responses)
7.5%\% Learning about ETD's (38/507 responses)
1.58%\% Other (8/507 responses)
88.07% of the people who took this survey
(384 / 436) answered this question.

Other Responses (8 for this question)
"assignment"
"other"( 5 ) responses
"project"
"Project work"

11. Did you download any ETDs?
If so, how many?

12.96%\% more than 10 (49/378 responses)
7.14%\% 6-10 (27/378 responses)
13.23%\% 3-5 (50/378 responses)
24.07%\% 1-2 (91/378 responses)
42.59%\% Didn't download any ETDs. (161/378 responses)
86.7% of the people who took this survey
(378 / 436) answered this question.

12. If you downloaded any ETDs, how did you find them?
Please select all that apply.

26.26%\% Browsed by department (99/377 responses)
13%\% Browsed by author (49/377 responses)
60.74%\% Searched (229/377 responses)
70.18% of the people who took this survey
(306 / 436) answered this question.

13. If you downloaded any ETDs, how easy was it to find what you were looking for?

6.31%\% Very difficult (19/301 responses)
24.25%\% Difficult (73/301 responses)
28.57%\% Fairly easy (86/301 responses)
28.9%\% Easy (87/301 responses)
11.96%\% Very easy (36/301 responses)
69.04% of the people who took this survey
(301 / 436) answered this question.

14. If you searched for an ETD, how fast was the response to your search request?

11.46%\% Haven't searched (37/323 responses)
3.41%\% Very slow (11/323 responses)
21.67%\% Slow (70/323 responses)
26.93%\% Fairly fast (87/323 responses)
25.08%\% Fast (81/323 responses)
11.46%\% Very fast (37/323 responses)
74.08% of the people who took this survey
(323 / 436) answered this question.

15. How often do you plan to use Virginia Tech's ETD library?

13.24%\% Rarely (47/355 responses)
28.73%\% Occasionally (102/355 responses)
14.93%\% Monthly (53/355 responses)
30.14%\% Weekly (107/355 responses)
12.96%\% Daily (46/355 responses)
81.42% of the people who took this survey
(355 / 436) answered this question.

16. How often do you plan to use other ETD libraries?

28.29%\% Occasionally (99/350 responses)
10.57%\% Monthly (37/350 responses)
34.57%\% Weekly (121/350 responses)
12%\% Daily (42/350 responses)
14.57%\% Rarely (51/350 responses)
80.28% of the people who took this survey
(350 / 436) answered this question.

Additional comments:
Please provide any comments about Virginia Tech's ETDs.

Text Responses (110 for this question)
"A comment about your web site. You need better global navigation. Once you start browsing you have to hit back buttons to get to the search function. Sometimes this is a lot of back buttons. Okay...I see that by clicking on the EDT logo near the top of the page you can go back to start but this is not obvious. I suggest you read Steve Krug's book on usability Don't Make Me Think. Of course, this is a little like the pot calling the kettle...don't look at Tulane's web site which has even worse problems with usability."
"a index of departement and keywords would be valuable"
"A very usefull and informative site. Thanks a lot"
"Appropriate and suitable to the extent that I can find my way through easily."
"Dear sir I try to seek for some ETD that could interest me. However, the search engine didn't work (tcp error)"
"doing good job to promote research" - ( 2 responses)
"dynamic analysis of shell ander random exitation" - ( 2 responses)
"Excelent"
"Excellent" - ( 2 responses)
"Excellent website! Really enjoyed it!"
"excellent!"
"faster"
"go on"
"good" - ( 11 responses)
"great"
"GREAT!! Fantastic."
"How long are the restricted ETDs restricted for?"
"htank you"
"I am a Doctoral student at another university. I am Reviewing Literature on the shortage of African American males in the teaching profession. Virginia Tech's ETDs has been very helpful to me."
"I believe this kind of knowledge base is extremely generous and helpfull for any student or interested individual that wants to study and research advanced subjects from different parts of the world and from various disciplines and sciences. I really appreciate the work and philosophy of this kind of initiative."
"I can not find any article or paper concerning science teaching in primary education would you inform me about how I link this field"
"I had to browse by author in order to find a particular dissertation. When I put the author's name in the search ETDs, I got results for everything but the dissertation I was looking for."
"i have not used up to now.this is the first time.my brother suggested me."
"i haven't searched. it is the first time!"
"I hope that I browse any ETDS by keywords"
"i never met any open source like this.if we want to improve our lifestyle and technology,we need to distributed the data specially among student and youngsters where we cannot afford for pay data but we love to read.thanks for ur help....:)"
"I think it a great facility which can introduce the help for the students and researchers."
"I think it is useful and helpful,above all it should be easy to use."
"I think the process to upload an ETD should be improved. Grad students who have done it have horror stories about how difficult and confusing it is, and they can't seem to do it without some special Acrobat software no one has at home. This is a huge problem for working students."
"I think this is an greate web side for students Loooking at the theses can give you direction of what to study or how to do research work."
"I was in the first class to do ETDs at VT. At the time, I had mi dissertation restricted. I just had the restriction lifted. A friend of mine in England asked that I let him know when he could read my diss. online. For someone not in the university system, it is horribly difficult to find the ETDs. I am computer fluent, and it took me 20 minutes of searching and back-tracking to find my dissertation and figure out the operative words to tell people to use if they want to read it. PLEASE!!! PUT A LINK TO ETDs ON THE RESEARCH PAGE!!!!!!!!"
"i would like to say thanx to every body has working in this website"
"I'AM SO SMART"
"I'd like to be able to search by subject"
"ILL dept gave me URL to the theses. Need a Do Not know option on more of your questions above. Not clear to me if I'm able to search all the theses or just VT only. Also I'd like to search by keyword or subject."
"it is a good one"
"it is useful"
"It is useful for MSC and PhD students"
"it is very good!"
"it is very good, though topics like tokamak, plasma physics etc. are not very rich. but i am satisfied with it. thanks"
"it is very important source of knowledge"
"It is very useful.Thank you for this facility.I want to search some more topics,how I have to search?.I will try again."
"it quite simple and easy"
"it's fine"
"It's great"
"It's helpful for many people."
"it's very interesent"
"its an useful place"
"just ok"
"My thesis is listed under two headings. Keyword search "cyanobacteria" pulls up my thesis "Molecular Biology of Desiccation Tolerance..." and also "materials and methods-microarray" which does not go to the ETD cover page but directly downloads the thesis. The materials and methods-microarray link should be deleted."
"nice"
"no comment"
"no comments"
"none" - ( 2 responses)
"not easy to find what I am interested"
"Nothing"
"one of the best i ever visited"
"one of the best sites i ever visited."
"optical sensing"
"pl guide me how to write proposal,to conduct an easy research ( as i have v good experience in the field of compost processing and facility management) but i do things in a v laborious way, while mosly researchers are only lab.scientist, on this aspect, i feel very confident, but acadamics & research require written background and literature but i am unable to get upto date lit&data...thanks"
"Please keep up the great job you are doing with this ETD site."
"Provide the link to ETDs on the "Find" menu of the home page."
"quite well!keep on!"
"so many papers!"
"sometimes"
"thank you ETDs"
"thanks"
"thanks..."
"The PDF file for the following thesis gives errors when printing: etd-042399-125728. (Nikhil M. Rao) Specifically, pages 30 and 94-99 will not print."
"the Search bye key word is faster"
"the search tool is not very accurate"
"the search was pathetic...it didn't even start. There should be an option in the survey "zero response" after "very slow"."
"The stupid search keeps timing out. Not very helpful."
"THIS IS A VERY GOOD SERVICE FOR RESEARCHERS AROUND THE WORLD. THANK YOU VERY MUCH"
"This is really a fabulous site. I was thrilled to find a thesis unavailable through the U of Michigan's service, and provide a link rather than printing out the whole document. Great work -- this site is wonderful."
"three level converter inverter"
"useful to research scholars"
"usefull"
"v. good"
"very good" - ( 5 responses)
"very good and helpfull for all people interesting to develp their knowlege .i like to give them my best rgardes and i hope to be like them in the future."
"very good gor our research work"
"very good!" - ( 2 responses)
"very good!very very good!!!"
"very helpful indeed. but in my opinion structurally incomplete database (no search by keyword, year of publication, etc)"
"very informative"
"very open and thanks a lot" - ( 2 responses)
"wonderful!"
"Your search doesn't work"
"Your search was not helpful because it did not work."


dla home
etds imagebase journals news ereserve special collections
virgnia tech home contact dla university libraries

http://lumiere.lib.vt.edu/surveys/results/view_results.php3
Generated at 04:47 pm on Monday, October 26th, 2015